Erik Holladay | Special to the Kalamazoo GazetteWestern Michigan's Flenard Whitfield scores over the defense of Ohio's Reggie Keely last Saturday at University Arena. Whitfield scored 61 points in the five halves before suffering an ankle injury Tuesday night, including 27 points and 11 rebounds against Ohio.

KALAMAZOO — The news on Flenard Whitfield's left ankle is perhaps as good as could be hoped considering the scene Tuesday night in DeKalb, Ill.

Western Michigan University's junior power forward was brought to tears by the pain after he landed on the foot of Xavier Silas, before crumpling to the ground early in the second half of the Broncos' win at Northern Illinois.

Whitfield is "questionable," Hawkins said, for Saturday's BracketBuster home game against Illinois State.

"There are no broken bones," Hawkins said. "He’s out (of practice) today and out tomorrow and will be questionable come Saturday. So we’ll see how it goes Saturday during shoot-around."

While insisting he wants to win Saturday's out-of-conference game, Hawkins said Monday's pivotal home game against Mid-American Conference co-leader Kent State has to be considered.

"You get into the whole situation of, well, what would you rather have him for? Because we play against just two days later against Kent State," Hawkins said.

"We’re not going to sit here and bring up the JV team to play in the varsity game and get ready for Monday. We want to win this game."

That said, Hawkins sounded like a coach preparing to play without his best interior player. Sophomore wing Nate Hutcheson received a "crash course" on playing power forward — which he did exclusively as a freshman — during Thursday's practice.

WMU will also again be without reserve center Muhammed Conteh (torn calf), who is also hoping to return by Monday.

Juwan Howard Jr., Caleb Dean and Dan Loney are likely to take the bulk of the minutes at power forward.

Freshman center Matt Stainbrook's conditioning might be tested against an Illinois State club that's strength is its inside players, with Dean the most logical choice to back up Stainbrook.

The absence of Whitfield would mean the loss of 13.4 points and 6.3 rebounds per game and would come after his best five halves of the season, during which be combined to score 61 points and pull down 23 rebounds.